Anyone ever built one? I have a few fish tanks and I've always wanted to make some DIY filters (and a DIY HOB protein skimmer - but that's for later).

This is what I'm trying to mimic:

Apparently these type of set ups are pretty common in Asia. I really like this concept. It's pretty easy to plumb and the only real downside I can think of is having pumps in your tank. Now since I plan to build this for my 6-foot tank, I don't mind as I have a few powerheads in the tank already to eliminate deadspots.

Now my situation is quite unique, as I have a turtle tank and I built an above tank basking area/canopy which looks like this:

So I don't have to do anything special to mount/hold such a system.

So now on to my crazy plans:

I plan to use this planter box and I'm going to drill two holes near the top of it and put two makeshift bulkheads in (whatever I can devise while looking for pieces at Home Depot) and then drill a hole on the opposite end - either on the bottom or the side. I have not decided yet - I can drill a hole into the plywood and run it straight though.

I'm going to run two different powerheads into this since I have two (actually 3) laying around. An MJ900, MJ400, and AquaClear 30. So there should be some decent flow.

Let me know what you guys think, I plan to use this for mechanical filtration, and chemical (purigen), that way they can be easily monitored and I can let my canister filter do all the biological filtration.